“Given how long the recession lasted and the alarming rates of poverty,
SNAP for many families has become not just a safety net, but a way of
surviving,” said Mid-Ohio Foodbank vice president of public affairs, Marilyn Tomasi, in an article cited by Think Progress.

In a recent op-ed piece, Feeding America president and CEO Bob Aiken said that the House farm bill cuts, if enacted, would amount to more than 8 billion lost meals for struggling families, by his organization's estimation.

"If divided evenly across Feeding America’s national network of food
banks, every food bank would need to provide an additional 4 million
meals each year for the next ten years, and that is just not possible," Aiken wrote. "There is no way that charity would be able to make up the difference. We
are already stretched thin meeting sustained high need in the wake of
the recession. We simply do not have the resources to prevent hunger for
the millions of people who would be impacted by these cuts—the
low-income working families, seniors, children, and individuals
struggling to get by."

The idea that charities will make up for cuts to SNAP and other federal
nutrition programs is popular—and erroneous. Charities, food banks, food pantries
provide an invaluable service, but they can't address
hunger alone. One in 24 bags of food assistance comes from charitable
organizations; federal nutrition programs, such as SNAP, provide the
rest.

In the documentary A Place at the Table, Pastor Bob Wilson, one of the film's subjects, talks about how the economic downturn in the United States has stretches his Colorado church's food pantry to its limits (This weekend, Pastor Bob and his wife Michaelene, will participate in a panel at Bread for the World's National Gathering to talk about their food pantry, and the increasing demand in their community).

"Every
Wednesday we go down and get a trailer full of food from Food Bank of the
Rockies," Wilson said in the film. "The problem that we run into in small towns is that the income level has
gone down, the jobs are minimal, the second and third generation people are
having to leave the area to find work.

"Ten years ago or so when we started this,
my wife and I had purchased an old Suburban and I remember driving into the
food bank and being excited about backing up and filling that Suburban with 10
to 15 boxes of food and thinking we were really making a difference in our
community," Wilson continued. "And after a year and a half
we bought a little single axel trailer that we could put two pallets of food in
and we thought we had really arrived, that we could certainly meet the needs of
the community with two pallets of food.
And four years ago a gentleman from our church donated this trailer and
now we’re doing four pallets twice a week and it’s amazing how the need has
increased over the 10 years."

Charities can't, and shouldn’t have to, do it
alone—government must do its part. Contact your members of Congress and tell them to protect SNAP and other vital food assistance programs from devastating cuts.

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Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which we live. Bread for the World is a 501(c)(4).